Butler's Cinema Scene

Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis and Jason Bateman in "Horrible Bosses"

“HORRIBLE BOSSES”  My rating: C+ 

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It may not be a comedy for the ages, but “Horrible Bosses” certainly resonates in the here and now.

The premise of this extremely rude effort from director Seth Gordon finds three buddies trapped in jobs with miserable bosses and, given the current dearth of employment opportunities, unable to escape.

Their answer: Murder. They agree to knock off each other’s bosses.

That’s a bit extreme, but then so is everything about this movie, which takes Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day and basically casts them as modern versions of the Three Stooges, nice dopes who mess up everything they touch and then react in a childlike frenzy of shoving, slapping and punching.

Nick (Bateman) is employed by a big office (financial services?) where he’s the butt boy for a sadistic owner (Kevin Spacey) who gets Nick to work slavishly by dangling promises about promotions and advancement. Needless to say, the promotions never come.

Kurt (Sudeikis) works for a chemical company, but when his beloved boss dies and leaves his coke-snorting, hooker-chasing, bad-combover son (Colin Farrell) in charge, things quickly turn ugly.

Dale (Charlie Day, of cable’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) is a dental assistant who undergoes sexual harassment 24/7 at the hands of his employer (Jennifer Aniston) but resists because he’s engaged to a sweet young thing. (Frankly, few men watching will sympathize with his plight..but at least the film has the good sense to acknowledge the incongruousness of it all.)

Commiserating over drinks the three float the idea of killing the people making them so miserable; they take the idea a step further when they visit the wrong side of town to hire a “hit consultant” (Jamie Foxx) who for a price offers advise on getting away with murder.

The screenplay (by Mark Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein) feels clumsily assembled and offers few real surprises in the story department. But it’s packed with laugh lines (some screamingly profane) and the three leads have a swell time as average Joes fumbling their way through unfamiliar territory.

Bateman is the troop leader…he’s not exactly a dynamic personality but he seems to be the most mature. Day plays an excitable dweeb who quickly falls to pieces; Sudeikis is a horndog who forgets everything else when confronted with an attractive woman (or at least a willing woman).

Director Gordon (of TV’s “Modern Family,” “The Office” and “Community”) certainly knows his way around comic actors, but this is his first full-length feature and he hasn’t yet figured out how to pace himself over a 90-minute-plus film. There’s a bit too much dead time here.

Still, if you’re looking mostly for some explosive laughs, “Horrible Bosses” should help get you through the dog days.

| Robert W. Butler